


Euphony

by masongirl



Series: Fluences [2]
Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotions, Established Relationship, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, POV Nixon, Period-Typical Homophobia, Romance, Soulmates, Synesthesia, Telepathic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22971409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masongirl/pseuds/masongirl
Summary: Nix can't stand the silence when the bond between him and Dick disappears in Bastogne.Soulmate AU in which soulmates can sense each other's emotions if they are close enough
Relationships: Carwood Lipton/Ronald Speirs, Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Fluences [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1633723
Comments: 12
Kudos: 139





	Euphony

**Author's Note:**

> The second story in my Fluences verse. I recommend reading Kaleidoscope first (it's Speirton), but it's not necessary.  
> Dick's fluences are in bold, Nix's are in italics.

The trees are falling apart, exploding into sawdust and needles and destroyed cones, and life is screaming, the men, the birds, the rats, the fleas, every godforsaken creature still alive in the forest, and the bombs keep coming _\- boom, boom, BOOM_ \- closer, and the foxhole is dark, a grave he dug for his own miserable self, and there's blood on his hands and mud under his nails, and Dick is scared, so, so **scared,** white and empty and glass-shard shrill in Nix's mind.

"Stop!" Nix yells in futile rage, but his voice is swallowed by the shriek of artillery fire. "Dick, you have to stop!"

He can't see Dick anywhere, he could be on the other end of this cemetery or stuck out in the open waiting for the final round, or he could already be wounded and bleeding out, and Nix can't help from his solitary vermin hole when that **fear** is deafening. He has a split second to wonder whether Dick still looks composed to whoever he has next to him, if there's anyone, then the connection shuts off.

The blind silence takes the air out of his lungs.

Nix always knew that for someone to have a compatible brain with him, they would have to be deviant bastards. His father drilled this into him over the years, that he's a no-good delinquent who'd be better off drinking his life away than making a lick of change in the family company. How could his soulmate be different? He signed up for the army to piss his family off. Maybe, he would die a hero, he thought. Or pretend he did and slink away into a foreign city where the chaos of war left a blank slate for new starts. He didn't count on ever meeting his soulmate or even wanting to know who they were in the first place. He'd just ignore them, he figured. They didn't need to be burdened by his insufferable personality.

Contrary to what he tells everyone, even Dick himself, he had been hearing him for days before the first actual, textbook-perfect fluence. He doesn't know why he received noises first, not emotions, but it probably had something to do with how Dick looked at the world. Alert and attentive, just taking it in without itching to leave his own muddy footprints on the canvas like most aspiring soldiers did in OCS. He never wanted to be loud, and so his voice must have been trapped in his mind for ages, struggling against Dick's steel-hard self-control and projecting to Nix as soon as he was within reach.

It's one of Nix's biggest regrets that he can't remember the first one. He must have been too drunk to store it away, and as he swore in his dreadful teenage years, he tried to rid himself of the connection by drinking even more. It didn't work. He could hear tiny murmurs, blurred exclamations of anger or disgust, and sometimes funny remarks. Sarcastic, stinging noises. They weren't words, as sending clear speech is near impossible, but it was definitely Nix's hearing that caught them, not his vision or feelings.

Then, while damn near fainting from boredom in one of their classes, Nix let his eyes zone out for a second and Dick smacked into his mind with the force of a train. An annoyingly cheerful one, washed-out blue.

**Fascinated.**

"Seriously?" Nix groaned under his breath and looked around. His curiosity got the best of him, conquering all his reservations and scepticism. He needed to know who on Earth was so interested in that day's material. A few guys ahead seemed attentive enough, but Nix's gaze was drawn to the left, where a tall, red-headed man sat with his back straight, eyes searching the faces around him. Nix knew that his name was Richard, but he didn't know he would be the best of the best one day, a nugget of gold the army was trying to sieve out of that rotten, smelly river of soldiers.

 **Fascinated,** rang again in Nix's mind, and he tilted his head, smirking. _Oh, this is going to be fun,_ he thought. Although to this day, Dick still lets their usual joke live on because it secretly pleases him to be called studious, Nix realised even back then that he was going about it all wrong at first. It wasn't the _lecture_ Dick was interested in, no - he was looking for the source of his first fluence. Their eyes met, and Nix can't quite pinpoint how, but he could do it instantly, without pause or conscious effort, his emotions just flowed straight through the connection the way he wanted. _Amused._

Dick smiled, he remembers - it was small and shy, but sure, because they both knew it, it couldn't have been anyone else. **Astonished,** came with the sound of a gasp, bitten-off. Dick's eyes were blue and bright like a sunny spring morning. _You'll be sorely disappointed, buddy,_ Nix thought to himself, but he couldn't turn away.

"What was the first one?" Nix only asked him once, after Nuenen, loose-limbed drunk and lethargic. The scratch on his forehead stung with irritating persistence, but he found some unwarranted vindication in it, because Dick was rubbing his own skin like he felt the second-hand ache and, at that moment, Nix thought he deserved it for the pain he caused in Nix's heart. For being so goddamn headstrong and moral. _Sad,_ he projected moodily.

Dick didn't answer. He paced the small billet he was assigned that night and stubbornly refused to look at Nix's slumped form on the floor. **Conflicted.** It fizzled. "Do you think inebriation transfers?"

The misty weight of too much alcohol pulled their bond wide open until there were no boundaries to keep the noise in the corner of Dick's mind where he banished it. His voice was all but echoing between them. Sometimes, Nix wonders whether he would have understood those unsaid words flickering beyond his reach if they touched then. "No idea. Why?"

"I feel drunk."

"How do you know how drunkenness feels?"

Dick stopped his restless walk and knelt beside Nix's spread legs, unconcerned about the dust on the parquet, leaning sideways against the same wall that held Nix's back upright. His eyelashes swept slowly across his skin as he blinked. "I suppose it must be like this."

 **Fond,** he sent, and Nix was wasted enough to tilt his face and smile up at him. They were so practiced at it that he knew when the message was deliberate. "Good?"

"Yeah." Dick whispered and pressed four soft-cold fingertips to Nix's cheek. His thumb paused before it arrived, gently, just under his eye. **Relieved. Calm.** A caress back and forth.

"Maybe…" Nix sighed, wanting a kiss. "Maybe, you just want to tell me I don't have to wait any longer."

The ease vanished from the air, and their bond seemed to creak like a row of wrought-iron gates closing after a fleeing carriage. Dick smiled, but there was something tight around the edges of his lips, something **mournful** , and he took his hand away. They couldn't, they knew it. No matter the depth of their bond, a crime was a crime. Dick's mind was murmuring the same incomprehensible thing over and over again, tree branches scraping on each other in the wind before a storm. Goosebumps on Nix's arm. **Resolute.** "Forget it, Lew."

Nix feels ashamed after the shelling stops. It's one thing to be scared, because they all are, it's a gut-deep reaction to staring death in the eye, but to ask - to _order_ your soulmate not to transfer that to you, such an uncontrollable emotion… Who else can you trust to listen without judgement if not him? That isn’t what Dick deserves, and they have done this countless times before. They can go into battle with stoic eyes and unwavering commands, but they have been sharing what's hidden for years now. Nix should have done better, he's used to this double-fold of feelings. But Bastogne is grating on everyone.

Sighing, he climbs out of the foxhole and vows to apologise to him in the most earnest of ways as soon as their connection is open again. It's only after he inspected the damage and checked on everything he could, when he finally feels like he can sit down and take a breath, that he realizes something is missing. It's quiet. Silent in a way that isn't right. And he knows Dick is alive and working as competently as always, he has seen him only a scarce few minutes ago, but somehow, his mind still frets, because it feels like something has died and the bond is gone. Gone. Was it like that when he talked to Dick earlier? Why is it so mute? Stupidly, his brain jumps back to Carentan and a conversation he couldn’t quite empathize with back then, but he feels that torment all the more profoundly now, and his regret claws at his throat like a hacking cough.

His ankle itched like hell that afternoon. A ricochet of a ricochet, he joked to himself. Dick was a buzz of **irritated** since he got wounded and it distracted him to no end, so he decided to put some distance between them, until the volume dampened. Walking between the battered houses left behind in the war's wake, he bumped into a platoon from Dog in the middle of the road where they were taking a reprimand from a livid Lieutenant Speirs. It wasn't Ron's usual behaviour - he was prone to ooze quiet intimidation instead and barked short, snapping orders, not diatribes. His uncharacteristic outburst made Nix pause and do a double take.

Speirs was wiping at his face compulsively, as if he had something trickling down on it that he couldn't brush away, but he wasn't crying, and the sky was as dry as Nix's throat. He moved jerkily, and his face was dead pale, with only small blotches of red smacked on it by the exertion of shouting. He had a chocolate bar in his free hand, one that the private in front of him eyed with morose resignation, and he was trying to stuff it into his pocket without much success. He was erratic and ruffled. Nix had never seen him like that before and, although he didn't know the man that well, he felt obliged to stay and find out what went wrong. Or maybe he was just too damn nosy for his own good.

After Speirs had let the men scramble out of his sight, he was still scrubbing his face and the vacant look in his eyes didn't bode well. Nix approached cautiously. "Ron, I think you should sit down."

He didn't. Speirs didn't tolerate weakness well and he held himself to even higher standards, he was not going to show that something bothered him enough to incapacitate. He pressed a finger to his temple and seemed to try his best to snap out of it. "He was… He screamed."

Nixon was surprised Speirs had been so touched by someone's demise. He was the cold, efficient type, who must have taught himself months before D-Day that death is a commodity in war. He didn't seem like someone who got shell-shocked from seeing a man die. That day, Nix came to the conclusion that a particularly gory casualty must have pushed even him over, but now he thinks it might have been something altogether different. What if that day Speirs felt his soulmate leave the world? Tearing the bond apart in his death, leaving nothing but a scream and ringing silence behind, like Dick did today. Only, he isn't dead, just cut off from Nix as if they have never connected in the first place.

The silence bothers him more than cold ever could. He remembers talking to Lipton in Holland, trying to give him advice even though Nix was just as fucking clueless as everyone else in the world, and they lapsed into a lull in the conversation. Then, Lipton glanced at him from the corner of his eye, almost too nervous to speak up. "What is he like?"

"In here?" Nix tapped his forehead. Lipton nodded and that made him laugh, happiness trickling over the brim of his cup of emotions. **Glad,** Dick responded to his joy immediately. "Loud and snarky."

"Does he -" Lipton swallowed, embarrassed. Talking about your bond feels almost as intimate as sharing your sex life or even more so - Nix couldn't blame him for being both curious and shy at the same time. "I mean, I get a lot of colours. And uh, tastes. How do you control what you send?"

"It's not much of a choice." Nix flapped his hand as if to explain. "You're set one way or another. If Dick could shut up, he would, trust me."

Looks like he finally achieved that, didn't he?

He finds Dick ten minutes later, fast asleep. That’s not cause for concern in itself - most of them are able to drift off at the drop of a hat because they need to make the best of what they get, and that's far from enough in this inverse hell. Sleep is almost as fleeting as a mirage. It's never deep though, so Nix’s worry makes his heart pound when Dick doesn't rise like he should as he lands next to him with a thud. He puts his hand on Dick’s cheek and finds him so alarmingly cold that his breath stutters in his windpipe. He’s instinctively projecting the exact shade of emotions they agreed on and practised as a distress call, their very own SOS, but the message blares into the void, with no recipient to pick it up. Did Dick actually…? No, that can’t be, he must be fine, everything is fine. Just peachy.

“Dick, hey, wake up, come on, come on, buddy.” He rambles, shaking him by the lapels, the body corpse-heavy in his grip. It doesn't feel real. He has never touched Dick without feeling his emotions zipping through the air like a current, he has never held him and faced such a disconnect. Is this an illusion, a trick of his fears? His fingers are clumsy and numb as he feels for a pulse and his thoughts are speeding too fast to make any sense, but he hears a groan then, and Dick stirs.

“Lew?” He mutters, eyes cracking open into hazy, narrow slits before closing again. “I’m sleeping.”

“No, you’re not.” Nix growls, barely resists swearing. He runs his palm over and over the strip of skin Dick’s scarf leaves uncovered, but the connection doesn’t flare into life again. It’s still gone. Skin to skin, pulsing blood and eerie silence. It's _wrong_ on every visceral level. “Dick, please.”

His hysterical tone does it. Dick springs into an upright position and stares at him, blinking that bone-deep exhaustion out of his eyes. His sharpness comes back faster than a bad habit. “What happened?”

Nix pushes at their bond again, where it should be, the hollow place he feels in its stead. Nothing. He doesn't have to spell it out - by now, Dick must have sensed the piercing absence too, because his blank face of attention morphs into regret.

"What did you do?" Nix whispers, horrified.

"You told me to stop, so I tried -"

"You heard me?"

"I felt it." Dick never tries things, he does them. He succeeds. He's the kind of person who knows how to deliver a win. "I did my best to stop. I'm sorry for laying it on you."

"It's involuntary. I shouldn't have -" Nix bites it off, shakes his head. "Where is it, Dick?"

"I don't know." Dick looks down at his knees and digs a little trench with the tip of his right boot, thoughtful. Damn him for being this calm. "I think it went away when I slept. I could still feel you before."

Nix slides down against the frigid dirt behind his back and calculates whether he can scrounge up enough alcohol to kill himself. "It's my fault."

"No. It's not." Dick denies sternly, ever the valiant knight coming to Nix's defence. It's almost as if he has selective blindness to all of Nix's shortcomings. "I think I just can't maintain it right now."

That makes Nix stop in his wallowing and give him a sharp look. It's not the kind of admission he hears coming out of Dick's mouth every day. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know how long I can keep going. Helplessness kills me." Dick shuts his eyes, and the lines around them dig marks of agitation into his face. His chest hitches as if every breath hurt. The void between them is colder than the sleet that slides under their thin clothes when their body melts the snow, and Dick seems only a cardboard copy of the original, a two-dimension replacement, even after he grasps Nix's right hand in both of his and traps it between his pulled-up knees and his stomach.

"I'm sorry."

Nix doesn't answer. He doesn't know how to say out loud what he never had to, and he feels disabled, having to rely on physical cues to guess how Dick truly is. He stares up at the dark branches above them and tries to focus on the spark of warmth caged between their thawing fingers. He never noticed before that Dick's hands are rough and calloused - they always felt so soft from the spun gold threads of tenderness each touch waived into his mind. Does Dick see him in a new light too? Can he finally spot the ugly blemishes all over Nix's existence that repelled everyone he ever loved? He can't bear the thought.

"Why don't you tell me about the first one?" He mutters to break the tension. For the first time, he would almost prefer it if one of the men interrupted them so that he didn't have to stay close.

"Because you won't like my answer."

"Can't do more damage now, can it?" Nix quips, and if it has more bite than he means to put into it, what does it matter anyway. He just keeps losing no matter what. Dick stares at him, and he turns to stare back. They would be fighting if their survival instincts didn't keep them immobilized in this pathetic cocoon of heat they built up together. The mystery in Dick's eyes makes Nix's face burn. He feels judged and not living up to the expectations.

"It was defiance." Dick tells him, after keeping it a secret for years, and isn't this the best moment to reveal it, when they are all but strangers again? "Bitter and amber like your liquor."

He was right, Nix doesn't like that. It reminds him of the things he hates and others he never managed to earn, of his father's disappointment and the fact that he still cares somewhere deep down and can't hide it. It reminds him of the day Dick learnt to know the taste of whiskey, and that memory is rock salt in a shrapnel wound.

It was the most beautiful day. He had coaxed Dick out of Camp Toccoa on a weekend pass and took him to a hotel, a homey one, nothing too fancy even though all Nix wanted was to lavish his soulmate and bathe him in comfort. He just knew Dick would appreciate a simple place more. They were planning to head out and pretend there was something to explore in the city and nothing to discover about each other, but then Dick sat on his cozy little bed, glanced at the chintz on the walls with his face aflame and pulled Nix down into his lap.

They kissed like that for a long, long time. Emotions liquid and see-through, rippling in synchrone after every roll of their hips and squeeze of their fingers. **Desire,** shared that way, transcended even the wildest of Nix's dreams. He remembers that Dick made small noises he only caught in his mind, through the connection, needy sounds Dick would have never let slip out loud, and he wanted to hear them fill the room. So, he picked up the bottle he discarded next to the bed and held it out. Like a dare. Dick's hands slid down along Nix's thighs, lingering yet ready to refuse, but Nix sent him a message and Dick's blue eyes snapped up. **Aroused,** he echoed back, a _want you too_. Smirking, Nix took a gulp of the whiskey and Dick kissed the taste right out of his mouth. It was the only time they had sex.

"I know what you're thinking about." Dick cuts into the pleasant part of his reminiscing.

"Do you now?" Nix chuckles, and it's a petty, sarcastic sound. He goes to pull his hand away, but the grip around it tightens.

"It's still not right." Dick says slowly, and Nix has a flashback to how nauseating **guilty** and **doubtful** tasted that weekend in the hotel, the morning after. "But I find I don't much care anymore."

It should be comforting, maybe even a source of joy, because it sounds like Dick is giving up his resistance, but Nix's feelings aren't anchored by Dick's anymore, finally free to plummet. His morose thoughts wander back to the hotel and the promise he made when Dick told him it couldn't happen again. Suddenly, he's not sure he's going to last long enough to keep it.

"I know you'll be ready to reciprocate one day." He said as Dick wiped at his eyes, and sent _love,_ even though it hurt to get **uncomfortable** as a reply. "I'll wait. I promise."

New Year's Eve greets them with fresh snowfall four days after they lost their connection. The week has been dragging on like an eternity without it - the chill abruptly harsher, the forest empty, the aftermath of a cataclysm. Without their bond, he can only hear what makes it to Dick's mouth and that isn't much, but the challenge to guess what he's missing has started to become exciting. Maybe, there's still a chance to salvage their relationship and go forward together. Is it foolish to believe that?

He presses up close to Dick's shivering body in their foxhole and whispers into his ear. "Let go."

"Of what?" Dick doesn't raise his voice either, even though the tarp above them muffles more than one would expect.

"Your worries. The responsibility. Everything. It's only you and me and this lovely white New Year's Eve." It's hard not to make that last part sound sarcastic, but he manages somehow. He swipes his thumb over Dick's knuckles and leaves his hand there, covered by their tattered blanket and the blessed darkness of the night. That's his arm's spot, warmed between Dick's stomach and thighs. "We're safe and no one's watching."

A drowsy silence stretches between them. Their breathing is a metronome, ticking down the seconds to midnight, and he knows from the way Dick's hand strokes his forearm that it's time. The world has been on fire another year longer. He leans sideways until his helmet knocks into Dick's and the mist of their breaths mingle.

"Lewis?"

"Yeah?"

"You're still my soulmate." Dick whispers.

"Of course I am." Happiness comes so easy sometimes. He turns and cradles Dick's cheek with his free hand, pleased that he doesn't flinch away. "May I?"

Dick's eyes shutter closed. "Yes, please."

Kissing him deaf to his emotions is stranger than anything they have done before. Every tremble of their mouths feels new and there's no synesthesia to override each other's tastes with the flavour of strawberries or champagne. It's rough. Dick's lips are cold and chapped, but Nix moves in closer anyway and takes the bottom one between his own, warms it with his breath and the tip of his tongue and flushes when Dick tilts his head and carefully licks between his teeth. Has it always been so wet?

Nix's stubble rasps against Dick's smooth face. He nudges their helmets off, out of the way, and trails kisses over Dick's forehead, his temple, his cheeks, back to his mouth, can't get enough. When he hears a tinkle, glasses clinking together, he chalks it off as an idle gift from his imagination, a reminder of content dreams, but then, then - Dick sags into his embrace fully and the soaked-red imprint of **grateful** lights up behind his closed eyes, bleeds. He pulls away with his breath leaving him in a rush. His _hope_ pushes up from his heart and finds a target. "Dick, do you -"

"Yes." Dick grins like he can finally breathe after being forced underwater.

Nix can hear the impression of a laugh in his mind, and his own smile splits his face in answer. "It came back."

"I'm so -" Dick starts, but never finishes it because they are kissing again and there's no need to say it out loud anymore. **Happy,** cracking and smoky like a campfire. **Sorry,** the smell of lilac. Nix can't wait to know what kind of memory that came from. Dick presses his lips to the corner of Nix's mouth and mumbles. "It will never happen again. I promise."

It's sobering enough that Nix pulls away. He would have preferred to stay drunk on relief all night. "You can't guarantee that."

Dick sighs and presses their foreheads together. "Let me… Let me try something."

There's a minute of quiet when Nix listens to the whistle of the wind as it barges into their foxhole through a gap under the tarp, then something honey-thick and tinted gold blooms behind his eyes, flowers on the surface. It reminds him of chintz.

**_Love._ **

It resonates through Nix's mind, a clear word, not just an emotion but a sound too. A comprehensible word. Typical. It figures that Dick would find a way to do the near impossible in this too, in both love and war. Damn overachiever.

"Really?" Nix makes a breathless sound. This must be his clue that Dick has come around and the torturous wait is over. Hell of a start for the new year. "How long?"

 **Serene,** comes the reply, sunshine on his face and the smell of leather and tobacco. "The train ride, if I had to pick a moment."

"Jesus." _Annoyed._ "And you still made me wait."

"You knew it all along."

"I guess I did." Nix allows, because it hasn't been a question of _if_ for a long time. He claps Dick on the shoulder and wishes he never had to let go. "Just needed you to realise we were going the same way."

~End~

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is welcome :)


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